Languages & The Media Post Conference Report 2008

LANGUAGES & THE MEDIA 

7th International Conference and Exhibition on Language Transfer in Audiovisual Media 

October 29 – 31, 2008 Hotel InterContinental Berlin 

Organised by: 

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Sprachen und Medien · Les langues dans l’audiovisuel 

7 th International Conference & Exhibition 

on Language Transfer in Audiovisual Media 

Languages & The Media 

Sponsors: Media Partner: 

October 29 – 31, 2008 

Hotel InterContinental, Berlin 

Global Business – 

Local Access 

Good-bye Quality? 

Post-Conference Report 

www.languages-media.com




CONFERENCE PROGRAMME 

The conference agenda was created through a selection process 

involving both a public call for proposals and in-depth research 

of the international media sector. The agenda provided 49 

presentations covering seven diverse topics. Fifty-seven speakers 

from 20 countries gave lectures on their fi elds of expertise for an 

international audience of 230 participants from 30 countries. 

CONFERENCE AGENDA 

FIRST CONFERENCE DAY 

The opening of the conference was introduced and chaired 

by Yves Gambier from the University of Turku, Finland. In 

his introduction, Gambier addressed the issue of accessibility 

of media, not only for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, but also 

for visually impaired media users. He pointed out that social 

marginalisation due to lack of accessibility is an urgent matter 

that needs to be dealt with in a proper manner. While media 

knowledge is expanding and new prospects of accessibility can 

be given, a healthy balance of a wide range of services and 

usability needs to be maintained. 

THE EVENT 

www.languages-media.com 

Languages & The Media 2008, the 7th International Conference 

and Exhibition on Language Transfer in Audiovisual Media, 

took place at Berlin’s Hotel InterContinental from October 29th 

– 31st, 2008. The Steering Committee included Mary Carroll 

(TITELBILD Subtitling and Translation GmbH), Germany; Jorge 

Díaz Cintas (Imperial College London), UK; Yves Gambier 

(University of Turku), Finland; and Corinne Imhauser (ISTI-HEB), 

Belgium. 

Sufficient 8% 

Conference Programme 

Good 54% 

Very good 38% 

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS 

Prior to the event, fi ve workshops were held. The topics of these 

hands-on sessions included: 

Creating Audio Description: From the Image to the Word 

Producing Effective Subtitles for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing 

Viewers. Practical Tips 

Training Respeakers: A Glimpse of the Present 

Live Subtitling: Respeaking the TV News. Essential Theory 

and Practice 

Videogames Localisation: Brief Introduction for Hardcore 

Translators 

Not Wothwhile 4% 

Overall Evaluation 

Worthwhile 49% 

Very worthwhile 47% 

Brij Kothari from the Indian Institute of Management presented 

his unconventional approach of using Bollywood karaoke 

subtitling for educational efforts. Dr Kothari and his team have 

innovated, researched and nationally implemented the Same 

Language Subtitling (SLS) project in India to promote 

mass literacy among the illiterate and weak readers. 

According to national studies, 600 million Indians 

are considered literate when, in reality, half of them 

have the weak reading capabilities of early-literates. 

The SLS initiative aims to transition these 300 million 

people from a state of weak and fragile reading to 

functional and fl uent reading ability. By making same 

language subtitles part of daily TV viewing habits,




reading becomes a regular and automatic process for the viewers. The success 

of this project, Kothari said, is remarkable: After fi ve years of exposure to SLS, 

the percentage of illiterates has decreased 50 percent while the number of good 

readers has doubled. As a positive side effect, newspaper-reading has gained 

popularity, leading to a boom in India’s print industry. However, the challenges 

of this initiative are still prevalent: In order to further implement, extend and 

fund the project, the on-going cooperation and support of television and 

education policymakers have to be ensured. 

Alex Varley from Media Access Australia tackled the issue of using global 

media empires to expand disabled access. Disability access to media is a global 

issue, yet it has been treated mainly as a local issue. Using the example of the 

local Australian market, Varley identifi ed the advantages and challenges of the 

captioning process on a global scale. Especially the easy access to contents 

in the production and import of DVD material can be used to implement 

captioning and audio description (AD). A common effort of interest groups and 

production companies may thus cater to the need of the disabled viewers and 

change the industry subsequently. Closing the panel, Varley placed emphasis on 

the opportunity of creating an international benchmark with accessible media. 

Notably, he underlined the fact that the service of subtitling and captioning had 

to be treated as a new product development and would, as such, be a profi table 

business. 

A majority of the fi rst conference day sessions focussed on the subject of live 

subtitling and language challenges. Following up on the introduction of this 

topic at the previous conference in 2006, this year’s presentations and discussions 

dug deeper into the matter. In two panel sessions chaired by Beatrice Caruso 

from SWISS TXT, Switzerland, and James Gardner of the Independent Media 

Support Group, UK, technical challenges and quality issues of live subtitling 

were examined. 

The fi rst conference day closed with a hands-on panel discussion on the topic 

of The UK’s Experience of High Levels of Access Regulation led by David 

Padmore from Red Bee Media. Based on the UK experience of high levels of 

access regulation, participants outlined the ways in which the key protagonists 

in the industry have balanced quantity, cost and quality. On the panel were Wilf 

White, Head of External Policy for the BBC; Chris Higgs, Managing Director, 

ITFC; and Dick Bates from the RNID Media Access Group. 

White explained how the UK’s regulation – including 100 percent subtitling by 

the BBC and over 90 percent from ITV and Channel 4 – has necessitated an ongoing 

discussion between all groups on how to achieve these volumes without 

reducing the quality of what goes on screen while remaining within affordable 

limits for cash-constrained broadcasters. The explosion of accessibility – over 

80 UK channels now have access obligations – has stimulated innovation in 

technology and in production methods, and an interesting double-edged 

relationship between the service providers and the audience. 

The discussion evolved around the reasons why access may not be as high in 

other countries. Participants from broadcasters remarked that a budget often has 

to be allocated for translating and subtitling of foreign language programmes, 

so little room is left for means of access. Translators and audio describers were 

mainly concerned about the cost pressures put on them by broadcasters. Highquality 

education and training is often not rewarded fi nancially. 

Panellists agreed that the great passion and enthusiasm on behalf of the BBC to 

give as much access as possible, coupled with an effective lobbying for the blind 

and deaf and hard-of-hearing, were paramount for the exemplary development 

in the UK. Broadcasters aside from the BBC also generally comply with the 

regulations as peer pressure accelerates compliance 

on the market. 

The numerous sessions during the day raised questions 

from participants and the evening reception offered 

the opportunity to extend the discussions, as well as 

to socialise with colleagues from 30 countries after 

the day’s fi nal session had closed. 

info@languages-media.com




SECOND CONFERENCE DAY 

The second conference day started off with a panel discussion on Achieving Accessibility and Challenges for Broadcasters, 

chaired by Mary Carroll from TITELBILD Subtitling and Translation GmbH, Germany. In their presentations, international television 

representatives shed light on the accessibility policies and conditions of their stations. 

Gion Linder from SWISS TXT gave insight on the accessibility reality of Swiss television. In 2007 a newly introduced radio and 

TV law regulated one-third of the broadcasting time to be subtitled in French, German and Italian. The law shifted the emphasis 

to easily accessible content such as news and documentaries, and raised the importance of effi ciency, quality assurance and 

intercultural management. With regard to these challenges, the process of transformation denoted a concentration on Swiss 

content and the outsourcing of drama programmes. Additionally, the focus now lies on raising awareness of accessibility among 

the general public. This will be accomplished by making subtitles visible to all viewers and using prime-time programming hours, 

as well as providing communication opportunities for the hard-of-hearing via websites. 

Izabela Künstler, from the Polish TV station Telewizja Polska, shared her 

experiences as the editor-in-chief of the Captioning Department. The station 

faces new challenges with new EU regulations requiring that all public 

broadcast television time be captioned. The vague EU guidelines require a 

re-organisation of work within the station, extra training of staff and special 

measures to guarantee quality, which are often connected with fi nancial 

issues. Having started captioning on public TV only 14 years ago, Telewizja 

Polska now provides about fi ve to six hours of captioning per day. Despite the 

ambitious intentions to expand the service for the hard-of-hearing, Künstler 

struggles with technical and competency needs. Since no speech recognition 

systems are available in Polish, the editing of live programmes is still a tightly 

scheduled, manual process. The implementation of new technologies, however, 

necessitates the specialised training of people while educational studies in that 

fi eld are still rare to fi nd. 

Pere Vila from the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation faces similar diffi culties 

in his daily work as a broadcasting representative for Televisio de Catalunya in 

Spain. Starting with the introduction of analogue subtitling in the early 1990s, 

Vila gave an overview of the station’s accomplishments in the fi eld of accessibility. 

Through a constantly innovating technical process, Television de Catalunya has 

introduced subtitling, audio description and sign language in recorded and live 

programming. With the launch of Digital Television, the technical feasibility of 

captioning and AD has improved greatly, though the lack of speech recognition 

software in the Catalan language still requires simultaneous editing. Vila closed 

his presentation with reference to the impressive statistic of 11,500 hours of 

subtitles in 2008, which gained him and his station recognition from the industry 

and interest groups. 

Mark Harrison from MTV UK & Ireland presented his station’s policies and 

challenges with Access Services. As MTV’s Access Services Supervisor, Mark 

Harrison coordinates all subtitling, sign language content and audio description, 

working with a small team of both in-house and freelance staff. He reported 

that in the UK, television access services are a legal obligation, regulated by the 

authority of Ofcom, the Offi ce of Communications. Thus, most channels are 

required by law to provide accessible content in varying quantities, based on 

factors such as channel revenue, ratings and content. 

The diverse content of MTV’s broadcasting schedule and high frequency of 

content repeats poses issues when it comes to access services; notably copyright 

issues concerning lyrics, turnaround, accuracy, viewing fi gures and schedules. 

With only one percent of all revenue designated 

to accessibility, MTV struggles with budget issues, 

though managed to raise the total amount of 

accessible content in 2007. The main channel, MTV 

One, increased the percentage of accessible content 

from 45 percent to 82 percent of all programming 

within only one year. Closing his presentation, 

Harrison stated that Access Services has become an 

invaluable part of MTV, with a potential future role in 

producing DVDs. 

www.languages-media.com




Isabel Charlton, Head of Access Services at Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) in 

Ireland, gave a retrospective of her work of building a subtitling division. 

From the introduction of teletext subtitling for the hard-of-hearing in 

1980 to the fi rst live subtitling on late night shows in 1995 to the launch of 

the Forum on Access Services in 2004, Charlton has cleared the station’s 

path to becoming the market leader in Ireland. What always remained 

in the focus of Charlton’s work was the constant cooperation with the 

deaf community in an effort to balance both their needs and the station’s 

development. Moreover, Charlton tackled the urgent issues RTE faced 

during the early stages. Besides common hitches like technical diffi culties, 

budget issues and dealing with interest groups, the problems of reliability 

and professionalism delivered by external providers were brought to the 

table. Between the years of 2003 and 2008, RTE managed to not only 

raise awareness for the need of subtitling among the public, but also to 

increase the amount of subtitling of channel RTE One by 70 percent and 

of RTE Two by an impressive 203 percent. 

The discussions that followed the presentations picked up on specifi c 

issues such as the technical realisation of producing accessible content, 

the balance of cost and quality in the production process, and customer 

needs. 

Subsequent to the opening panel, the second conference day offered 

further sessions on topics such as the latest tools and innovative formats 

of language transfer, new aspects in the fi elds of dubbing, subtitling and 

audio description, as well as issues of quality management. 

CONCLUSION 

Following up on topics addressed at previous conferences, Languages & 

The Media 2008 remained up-to-date with this year’s agenda. A wealth 

of questions and experiences on the issues of providing accessibility, guaranteeing 

quality and dealing with time and cost pressures were brought 

to the table by speakers and participants alike. Numerous sessions during 

this year’s conference tackled the urgent concerns revolving around the 

focus of content localisation in a globalised business. The quality assurance 

of local and global content, a lack of standardised tools in a multilingual 

environment and the growing variety of special interest groups and 

their individual needs were identifi ed as the main challenges of the industry. 

Giving an outlook on the coming years, however, the development 

and implementation of new media technology will cater to the future 

improvement of access content within a restricted time and cost frame. 

MARK YOUR CALENDAR 

October 6 – 8, 2010 

Hotel InterContinental, Berlin 

EXHIBITORS 

www.languages-media.com 

The conference was accompanied by 

a parallel exhibition that featured the 

following companies: 

� Titelbild 

� Dr-Maria.com 

� MWA sondor engineering AG 

� Screen Subtitling Systems 

� Sysmedia 

� Elrom Studios 

� TRADUCCIONES IMPOSIBLES / 

VOSE Subtitulos y Localización 

Organisers: 

ICWE GmbH 

Leibnizstrasse 32 10625 Berlin Germany 

Tel: +49 (0)30 310 18 18-0 Fax: +49 (0)30 324 98 33 

E-Mail: info@languages-media.com www.icwe.net

Languages & The Media Post Conference Report 2008

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